The Puerto Rico pill trials the history of birth control has a dark past.

But while it’s all well and good talking about how revolutionary an invention the Pill was, we need to talk about the darker side of its creation.

Medical trials were needed to test how safe and effective it was, but what most people don’t realise is that there was mass exploitation of vulnerable women for these trials. Women who were mentally institutionalised in US asylums and impoverished Puerto Rican women participated in the early trials, sometimes unwittingly.